Up First from NPR - Sudan's "Forgotten War"

Episode Date: October 27, 2024

12 million displaced. As many as 150,000 dead. Half the country facing starvation. The simple truth? War is tearing apart Sudan. NPR's West Africa correspondent Emmanuel Akinwotu recently reported near the heart of that fighting. Along the way, he met a young man who, with his family, survived for months on flour and water while hiding under a bed. He found doctors caring for the sick and dying even as shells exploded nearby. The current humanitarian crisis in Sudan is seen as one of the worst in the world, but has little global attention. "They forget about us," one exhausted doctor said. "It's a forgotten war."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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This is a Sunday story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. I'm Andrew Mambo, a producer on the show, filling in this week for Aisha Rasco. Not long ago, NPR's West Africa correspondent, Emmanuel Akinwotu, went to cover the brutal war playing out in the country of Sudan. As many as 150,000 people have been killed. And now with millions having fled their homes, it's the world's worst displacement crisis. Emmanuel is here today to talk about what he saw and how the country got to this point. Hey, Emmanuel. Hey, Andrew.

So, Emmanuel, to start, the country's main airport is in Khartoum, which is at the center of the fighting. So you had to get around that by flying into another city. What was it like when you landed? So I flew into Port Sudan, which used to be the sleepy port city along the Red Sea, but almost overnight it's become this impromptu capital with new hotels, new high-end restaurants, springing up all across the city. But there are also several schools and abandoned sites that have become displacement camps, filling up with thousands of people.

From Port Sudan, we hired a driver to get us to Khartoum, which was about a 13-hour drive by road. Hello. And throughout the journey, I was just bracing myself for the difficult things we were likely to see there. But what really struck me, Andrew, was just how beautiful the country is. The road snakes through the Red Sea Mountains. It passes through vast countryside, through miles and miles of wheat and rice.

Then we saw the incredible Meroe pyramids. Most people associate pyramids with Egypt, but there are actually more pyramids in Sudan built more than 2,200 years ago. And we couldn't just pass by. We ended up going up close just to see these inscriptions on the walls, images of ancient newbie and queens and figures. Wow, that sounds so beautiful. It was, it was incredible.

But of course alongside all of this beauty we began to see the signs of the war emerge, especially as we got closer to Khartoum. Some of the towns we stopped in were filling up with thousands of displaced people. Finally we arrived on the outskirts of Khartoum and then we could really see just how destructive and horrific this war has been. Okay, help me understand, how did it get to this point? So to really understand this war we have to go back to a moment of immense hope five years ago. The brutal dictator Omar al-Bashir, he'd just been ousted after almost 30 years in power and it was a shock. It started with people protesting

against the state of the economy and then unexpectedly these protests morphed into a revolution. Social media was full of footage of these incredible scenes of thousands of people pouring out onto the streets chanting in, but also in hope. And within a year of the protests, there was a new civilian-led government and this promise of the first free elections in decades. And Emmanuel, this wasn't your first time in Sudan. You were back there in 2020 in the early days of the new peace. So what was it like?

I remember going to these beautiful outdoor restaurants on the bank of the River Nile and talking and meeting people who were just saying how much had already changed even in a short space of time. There was a larger creative scene flourishing, there was gradually more freedom of expression and optimism that despite the very real challenges people were facing, the country felt like it was turning a page. But at the same time, it was also on a knife's edge. There was a lot of fear because the civilian-led government was still very fragile.

That kind of tension sounds familiar. We've seen this play out so often where popular uprisings don't succeed. I'm thinking about the Arab Spring and Egypt, when there was a time of great hope, but the revolution was exploited. Exactly. And this is more or less what happened in Sudan. The civilian-led government lasted less than two years. Then there was a coup led this time by the Sudanese army and a powerful paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, better known as the RSF. Just within the past few hours, the head of the armed forces

dissolved the joint military-civilian government. In October 2021, they arrested the prime minister and his cabinet and made themselves head of a new transition government. And it was this dramatic turnaround that was widely seen as a major betrayal of the revolution. After that, these two groups, the RSF and the army, they started struggling for control and for power and within a few years they were at war. And things got ugly really really quick right? It's been devastating. It's now the world's worst displacement crisis with more than 12

million people internally displaced or made refugees. That's more than a fifth of the country and half of the country are facing starvation. The death tolls vary, but by some estimates, as many as 150,000 people have been killed, which is just an absurd thing to say, really. That's just a staggering number. I mean, by some estimates, it's up there with the worst conflicts we've seen around the world recently, but we hardly hear about Sudan. Yeah, it's a huge figure. And when you compare the intention the media plays to these different conflicts, it becomes

clear that life isn't valued the same way. It feels like one person dying is a tragedy if it happens in the West, but in places like in Africa or the Middle East, it seems to take maybe 100 or more people dying just to provoke the same level of attention or outrage. Sudan is a particular example of that. They've had multiple wars. Over 2 million people died in the last civil war, which raged for over 20 years.

And the relative amnesia to those, you know, insanely high casualties has continued to now. You know, yeah, I do think that when people hear this, they might have a vision of Sudan as a place, you know, always at war and this kind of destruction is normal. But Emmanuel, the way this conflict is playing out is totally different than anything the country's experienced before.

Absolutely. Even after 18 months, so many people in Sudan are still in shock. Through all of Sudan's past and brutal wars, the people in the capital in Khartoum, they lived in a bubble. They lived normal lives, safe from the destruction and conflict that was raging around the country. It's not that they were unaware, they just weren't as directly impacted because the fighting was happening out in the provinces or in faraway regions. It

never came to the capital city but this time the fighting erupted right in their homes, in their streets, in their neighborhoods, and it spread from there throughout the country. You're listening to The Sunday Story. Stay with us. This message comes from Wyse, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange

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popular NPR shows, like Weekend Edition Cabernet. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, all purchases help support NPR programming and fund quality reporting developed to connect people to their communities and the world they live in. More at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is the Sunday story. I'm talking with NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu about his recent trip to Sudan, a country in the midst of a deadly civil war.

So Emmanuel, after your long drive, you finally arrive in Khartoum state, where the capital Khartoum is, and where the conflict really began. What did you find? Well, Khartoum is mostly controlled by the RSF, that's the paramilitary group the army is at war with. And we were with an army escort so we couldn't even go there. But we were able to go to Ondoman, which is a kind of sister city just across the river now. Ondoman is this busy, lively desert city where cars and donkeys share these sandy roads. It's the cultural capital of the country with museums, monuments, outdoor cafes.

We could see Khartoum from Omdurman, but we couldn't actually go there or cross the bridge. We couldn't even go near the riverbank for more than a minute because it's in range of snipers on the other side. That sounds really intense. So let me get this clear. The RSF control Mosul Khartoum and the army controls Omdurman. But in general, which side do the people blame for starting the war? It's complicated because both sides really are responsible.

Together the army and the RSF launched the coup that took down the civilian-led government. And both of these groups have been accused of committing horrific atrocities. But the atrocities committed by the RSF are generally far worse. The soldiers have been accused of looting, raping and ethnic cleansing. The majority of Sudanese people just want the war to end, but if they had to pick a side they'd likely prefer the army to come out on top. For most people, the army has more legitimacy and trust in Sudan, and when the army take back areas from RSF control, like when they took back Omdurman, the scenes are incredibly emotional. You see people weeping, hugging and kissing soldiers. They see them as their salvation,

even if the army is saving them from the very problem they helped create. In Omdaman where we were, the army was in control and preparing to make a major advance into Khartoum and they've made some strides. Meanwhile, the RSF were launching artillery shells into the city constantly,

at military targets, but also indiscriminately. It must be brutal for the people living there. It is. We were there reporting and trying to figure out just how to show what people in Omdurman are facing day to day and how brutal the war has been. And I met one family who had this harrowing escape from RSF-controlled Khartoum. They invited me into the house where they'd fled for safety in Omdaman. Good morning. Good morning, sir. How are you doing?

Well, I'm fine. Nice to see you. The family was staying in this sprawling yellow three-story clay house with a balcony overlooking Omdaman and a courtyard with a lemon tree. There was the father, Usama, who'd been a professor before the war, his wife, his daughter, and their 21-year-old son, Al-Zubair, a student at university. Al-Zubair.

How are you doing? Hello, sir. Emmanuel. They served me, my producer, and photographer tea and dates. Then Al-Zubair told me the story of what they'd been through. And we thought by the end of the week,

everything will be just fine. He said they were living at home in Khartoum when fighting broke out without warning. Then Al-Zubair told me the story of what they'd been through. He said they were living at home in Khartoum when fighting broke out without warning. There was this constant gunfire around their home, shattering all the windows. They were trapped and even had to hide under their bed for months, only leaving to use the bathroom and to scrounge for food. Most of the time we would just, we have like one kilo of flour and just put some water on it, spray some salt or anything and we just eat it. Like it's just barely anything. We lost so much weight. So for this middle-class family things rapidly changed. They were living

in a nice neighborhood within a vibrant city, then overnight they find themselves huddled under their bed, eating flour, and then even the flour started to run out. This is a certain death. We cannot stay any week longer. We're going to die. So after another week of wait, we said, you know what, we're just going to do it on foot. They decided to walk from Khartoum to Omdoman through an area where there was some of the most intense fighting.

And they were hoping that soldiers would spare their lives. And they met other people doing the same thing, many of them frail and starving too. And they walked in a group through essentially a war zone. Light, signs, streets, shops, everything was full with bullets. And you can see like the shells, the shells of the bullets were all the place. Like we were scared because we know this is a no man's territory. Something that is hard for people to grasp

when they listen to stories like this is that these are areas you knew very well. Yes, yeah, this is like, I remember when I was a child, we used to live here. So every time I'd go to school, I would cross these streets. I even had friends who lived there. And this is like a busy place, like this is like a very lively place. And to see it at that state is, it just, it felt like a piece of horror movie.

Like life has been sucked out of everything. It took them six hours to make it to a neighborhood on the outskirts of Khartoum where there was still some sense of normality. Walking for six hours through constant gunfire and military checkpoints must feel like an eternity. Exactly. And remember they were also extremely weak. They had barely eaten in months only eating spoonfuls of flour. So when they finally got to this safer neighborhood, the first thing they did was just eat a full meal.

And we sat down, we sat down to this fluffy booth and we start eating. Like we didn't believe like, like I didn't like we were so happy that we didn't care about the taste. This is the first time we hold a bread in my life in nine months and you eat it. We ate a sandwich, we took another, if my dad didn't pull us we would sit the whole day and keep eating. Even till this day we still savour this moment. Whenever anyone brings this moment we still enjoy about it. So eventually they made it to Omdoman. They're all alive and safe. But before I left the house, Azobar told me what he and his family have been through has

completely changed them. You're basically not the same person. The witness, the horror, the tension, the terror, everything. So you will go to your life happy and that, but you're also going to bring these memories with you. You will see that how life happy and that, but you're also going to bring these memories with you. You will see how things can deteriorate quickly, what other people can do to other people. You start to realize how this world works. It's not just flowers and roses.

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of the most pressing political issues. New episodes of The Political Scene are released Monday, Wednesday and Friday wherever you get your podcasts. So, Emmanuel, the war has already damaged so much of Sudan's infrastructure, including its healthcare system. I understand you spent some time in one of the few hospitals that are still functioning in Omdurman, what did you find there? So the hospital is called our now hospital. It sits on the corner of this sandy side road.

It's a large compound with trees and you hear a lot of bird songs and still the shelling. And people are streaming in and out of it. Several people were waving prescriptions and begging for money because they couldn't afford medication. Inside the hospital, it's really tense, just crammed. It smells of unwashed bodies, of people who've been struggling for basic sanitation and water. There were several people injured, some being cared for by loved ones, lying on beds or even lying on mats on the floor

in the hallways or pretty much anywhere that they could find room. We met the director of the hospital. OK, thank you for coming here in Sudan. Welcome to Elnav Hospital. His name is Dr. Jamal Mohammed. He's 52 years old, and he's an orthopedic surgeon. What struck me about Dr. Jamal was, like a lot of doctors, he's very poised and calm, even in this

intense context. He told me he and all the medical staff haven't been paid a salary since the war started. They're basically working for free, only living off small stipends and getting by with virtually no supplies. He told me they lacked basic equipment or medicine, even at times anesthetic. basic equipment or medicine, even at times anesthetic. He said one of the hardest moments was when he had to operate on two children without anesthetics. The bleeding was severe. Maybe I'm going to lose the kids, so I forced them to take them without anything. Maybe it's one of the most painful experiences. I mean, that just sounds so awful. The children were just 11 years old and 8 years old,

but because of what he and other doctors did, they survived. I asked Dr Jamal whether he felt the outside world cared enough about what was happening in Sudan. No, no. They forget about us, I think. It's a forgotten war. We left his office and he gave us a tour of the hospital grounds. We went to the emergency room and it was totally packed. The doctors sitting here, look how they are crowded. It's so crowded, I mean, there's so many beds.

Some of the people, some of the patients bring their beds from their homes, like this one. People are lying, as you see, two patients in my bed. We met people with serious injuries. One man was Musa Atfara, he's 38, and he was on a bed in the hallway. And now he's been treated for the wound. What happened was, he was a few metres outside of his home when it was bombed. His brother found him and brought him into the hospital. All these are small shrapnel nails from the, look here.

The biggest one was here and hit it here. All this is shrapnel. And the shrapnel also pierced his throat, so he struggles to speak. I don't know what what happened at my home. I hope good, inshallah. He says while he's thankful to have survived, he's not sure where he'll live now because his home has been destroyed. From there we went to another wing of the hospital, and we saw scores of just sick and frail people who were suffering from conditions like diabetes or the flu and rising cases of cholera.

And these are people who are ill, they have not been injured from the war. But it's a part of the world. They are ill because they didn't find their medication. They are ill because they are starving. You can call it collateral damage because of the war, collateral disease because of the war. And half of Sudan's population now faces starvation. Then he took me to another part of the hospital and we hear this loud explosion. Some victims that came to us without their permission.

It's artillery shells being fired close to us. It sounds so loud. Yeah, it sounds very loud and very scary. And for me it's frightening, but for Dr Jamal it's become normal. Then we arrived at these two buildings opposite one another and one of them was a morgue. There was a cold room and we could see this covered body of someone who died earlier in the day.

We kept them here. We washed them here sometimes on our Islamic way. And then this is what we're wrapping them in it. Then Dr Jamal turned on a computer and showed me hundreds of photographs of unidentified people who died there. They have nobody here. No family. Or we don't know their families. And you take their pictures in case anyone...

Yes, I'm taking the pictures, putting them in the social media. Maybe some family, they know their kids and some find them. But most of them aren't found. So we kept them here and we built them. At the end. While we're in the morgue, you start to hear this different sound coming from a nearby building. It's from the maternity ward. Here's my friend who I just have a baby right now.

Oh, you just had a baby right now. Oh you just had a baby? Congratulations. Thank God. Thank you. The father Mohammed is 24 and he's just had a baby girl. Is this your first child? Yes, first child. The mother, she's doing fine?

She's fine. She's fine. She's fine. She's fine. She's fine. She's fine. She's fine. She's fine. okay? Yes, she's fine. She's fine.

She's fine. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. And we're kind of swept in his joy, in this moment of joy. But this moment doesn't last long, at least for us. Someone comes to tell Dr. Jamal that people have just been brought in, rushed into the emergency ward. So we run back there.

So there's just been a shelling? Yeah, they came right now. Can you see that? And when we arrive, it's in chaos. There's blood all over the floor. Blood everywhere. There are dead and's blood all over the floor. Blood everywhere. There are dead and injured people all around the ward.

The man, the young man, his top is soaked in blood. They're trying to bandage him. You stay with Emmanuel. Two doctors are administering CPR on a young man. But despite all their efforts, he doesn't make it. And nearby, his relative begins to weep. Yet another death to add to an already massive toll. We were only in this hospital for a few hours, but for them this is their 24-7, their everyday throughout this war, this forgotten war as Dr. Jamal calls it, that has no end in sight. Emmanuel, thank you so much for this reporting.

Thanks for having me. This episode was produced by Liza Jaeger. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt and Tara Neal. Gilly Moon was our engineer. It was fact-checked by Greta Pittenger. The Sunday Story team includes Justine Yan and Kim Naderfein-Pietersa. Our supervising producer is Liana Simstrom and Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. And a special thanks to WHRB.

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